Earlier tonight I was listening to a sports talk radio program. They were talking about this one baseball player in a major slump who isn't talking to the media. The host of the show took the point of view that all professional sports players are obligated to talk to the media. That the fans pay good money to see them play, and in that sense the fans are the players' ultimate boss. So, the players should use the media to stay in contact with them in both the good and bad times of their career.

As I was listening to the callers either supporting or arguing against that point. I stopped hearing a sports program discussing one player and heard a more generalized argument for and against isolating oneself from others during troubled times in one's life. How during both the good and bad times we should keep the lines of communication open with others and avoid the trap of actively avoiding people when things aren't going well for us.

It was rather strange knowing on one level I was hearing a sports program talking about one player who is refusing to give interviews and yet hearing another argument that I don't know if anyone else was hearing as well.

That other argument is one I know I deal with a good part of the time. Isolation is one of my default defense mechanisms when things get stressful for me, and it seems the older I get the more I seem to encounter events that trigger stress reactions in myself. :-/